After 60 years, Israel Retrieves Syrian Spy Archives from Notable Agent Executed by Hanging

TEL AVIV – Israel has retrieved thousands of items belonging to the country’s most famous spy after a covert operation in Syria.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed some of the 2,500 artifacts from the Syrian archive related to Eli Cohen, an Israeli operative who managed to penetrate the Syrian political elite, to Cohen’s widow. This day marked 60 years since Cohen was executed in Damascus.

The items recently brought to Israel encompass documents, recordings, photos, and possessions seized by Syrian intelligence after Cohen’s arrest in January 1965. This includes letters he wrote to his family in Israel, photographs from his missions in Syria, and personal belongings taken from his home after his arrest.

The collections brought to Israel also contained worn folders filled with handwritten notes, keys to his Damascus apartment, passports and fake ID documents, assignments from the Mossad to monitor certain individuals and locations, and records of his widow, Nadia Cohen’s appeals to global leaders for his release from captivity.

Cohen’s success in Syria was one of the Mossad spy agency’s first major achievements, and the top-secret intelligence he obtained is widely credited with helping Israel prepare for its swift victory in the 1967 Middle East War.

Eli Cohen managed to forge close contacts within the political and military hierarchy of Israel’s archenemy in the early 1960s, ultimately rising to become a top adviser to Syria’s defense minister. In 1965, Cohen was caught radioing information to Israel. He was tried and hanged in a Damascus square on May 18, 1965. His remains have yet to be returned to Israel, where he is regarded as a national hero.

In 2019, actor Sasha Baron Cohen portrayed Eli Cohen (no relation) in a six-episode Netflix series called “The Spy.”

“We conducted a special operation by the Mossad, by the State of Israel, to bring his (Eli Cohen’s) archive, which had been in the safes of the Syrian intelligence for 60 years,” Netanyahu told Nadia Cohen on Sunday in Jerusalem.

Ahead of viewing the items, Nadia Cohen told Netanyahu that the most important thing was to bring back Cohen’s body. Netanyahu said Israel was continuing to work on locating Cohen’s body. Last week, Israel recovered the body of an Israeli soldier from Syria who had been missing for more than four decades, after he was killed during a clash with Syrian forces in Lebanon in 1982.

“Eli is an Israeli legend. He’s the greatest agent Israeli intelligence has had in the years the state existed. There was no one like him,” Netanyahu said.